My thoughts on downloading television programmes

An e-mail I have written in response to @triplejhack:

I’m a ‘downloader’. I download television programmes from popular torrent websites for several reasons:

Unavailability in Australia; typically the shows I download aren’t aired on free-to-air television, or if they are, it is several months (even years) behind the airing in the US. This is problematic because when going online to discuss my favourite shows, US and other overseas viewers have already seen and are well ahead of the episodes I’ve seen.
Easy to watch; I can watch the downloaded show whenever I want, wherever I want. I can put it on my phone and watch it on the train to work if I really want.
No advertisements; helpfully, the people who record the shows cut the advertisements out.
Reliability; sometimes the FTA networks will air episodes out of order for whatever their obscure reasons are, usually to boost viewers at certain times for advertising reasons. When episodes are linked and follow a greater story arc, this is incredibly annoying.

As for the legal issues?

From the point of view of Australia FTA networks; they should get their act together and get overseas shows here sooner. They should cut the crap advertisements (people screaming about sales, SALES, SALES!!!) and condense advertisements into a single block at the end of a programme/beginning of the next.

From the point of overseas content creators; they should get their acts together with networks worldwide and make sure content is released globally simultaneously. It really is ridiculous in this day and age that programmes take months to be “shipped” (they are not physically shipped of course) overseas. It’s similar to region encoded DVDs that are “locked” to a particular country in order to enforce artificial price tiers in different countries simultaneously.

From my point of view; I don’t much care for the legality of it, which is why I do it. However, if the content providers or networks did offer a download service it would have to be flexible, ie no DRM. Fair use (for me) means I should be able to transcode the content to another file format for playback on another system that I own if I so desire.

The main show that I download, and will religiously download no matter what, is Top Gear from UK. I can literally watch the episode about an hour after it is aired in the UK. The producers of TGUK have indirectly commented about this phenomenon on their official blog and do not seem against it in the slightest. Then again, TGUK is funded through payments collected by the British TV licensing system and as such the British people already “own” all shows paid for through this scheme, so there are no networks/content providers involved to complain about “stolen revenue.”

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Published:: 07.28.09 / 2pm

Category:: Blog

Ashley G 08.07.09 / 4pm

I agree with all of your arguements, though i would like to add my little insignificent (spelling LAWL, I’m at work and can not be bothered looking up or thinking about the spelling) opinnion.

I believe if they had a one stop shop online that was not to pricey and allowed you to download DRM-FREE movies/TV shows/Music, they would make more money and please their clients at the same time. omg is it that easy ashley, yes i must say it probably is.

I do believe that most people have the same opinnion as me :)

Ash

Aaron 10.01.09 / 4pm

I dont mean to be rude, but do you realise that its the SALE SALES SALES advertising that keeps free to air TV FREE ? No ads = no tv

Owen 10.01.09 / 6pm

I have no problem at all with sales, but I do have a problem with marketing people using subversive tactics to get sales. I figure, if the product is good enough, having an advertisement about it to alert people to its existence is enough to get the sale. Product not so good? No sale. Of course, that’s me being idealistic and proposing that sales figures should reflect intelligent buying patterns, as opposed to sales figures reflecting the success of marketing campaigns.

Also, all that aside, we should adopt the same model that the British have in the UK. If you own a television, you pay a yearly licence fee. Everything you see produced by the BBC (which produces a lot of awesome stuff!) is entirely funded by the public. Of course, it’ll never happen here because all the commercial channels would actually have to produce non-shitty television to compete, but again, it’s nice to dream.

Actually, I already said most of that in the initial post. I thought you’d commented on another post of mine. Oh well, my comment stands, if it is somewhat redundant.

John Young 10.13.09 / 11am

Couldn’t agree more! My pet gripe at the moment is Channel 10. One of my favorite shows is Dexter. Last Sat night 10 September I programmed my PVR to record it at advertised time of 10.45 PM., as usual adding 30 min to record time to compensate for the usual overruns. When I tried to watch it next day all I got was 1.5 hrs of old movie “Speed” which was supposed to finish at 10.45. Also CH10 must have the worst placement of ads of the the three free to air commercial channels. Is it any wonder so many people download TV show episodes from bittorrent sites these days and watch them ad free at their convenience. The commercial channels can scream like stuck pigs all they like about copyrights and intellectual property, etc but they are digging their own grave with their arrogant attitude towards viewers.

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My thoughts on downloading television programmes

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